


so show me family

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Daemons, Gen, OT5, x-factor era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Fuck," Louis whines as he looks at Harry and the tiger, unable to help himself. "I've wanted to pet her since the moment we met you, can I?" They all burst out laughing, and from there they all have to try it. It's like nothing Louis has experienced, the feeling of touching someone else's daemon, and even more so becoming comfortable with one. It's like all at once he knows everything about these boys, trusts them without a second thought, even though they've barely known each other for a week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so show me family

**Author's Note:**

> (♪ bungalow ot5, all i've ever wanted ♫). based on daemon canon from the _his dark materials_ series and written after extensive discussions with shannon, chloe and falon. props. this is probably rife with typos but i should be asleep right now sooo soz.

1.

It’s a crowded mess backstage with the group at boot camp, but Liam still spots Zayn and his daemon from halfway across the big set. Stalking around, scaring off all the girls with high heels and butterflies perched on their shoulders. He’s never seen anything so cool.

“Is she always like that, or are you just making an entrance?” he asks when he gets within a safe distance, a little shy. The big tiger daemon turns her deep brown eyes on his face for a moment before looking back up at Zayn.

“She just settled yesterday. We’re still adjusting.” Zayn puts a hand on his daemon’s flat, stripey head as Liam’s heart thrills a little with the thought settling in a place like this. Zayn looks up at him. “Her name is Cheyta. Where’s yours?”

“She’s there,” Cheyta says. Her voice is soft and serious, not the low rumble Liam was expecting. She tips her chin up toward Liam’s shoulder, blinking in slow pace with Zayn.

“Lilia,” Liam says. She pokes her head out, in the simple form of a hamster right now so she can ride in the hood of his sweatshirt. “She’s usually – yep,” he says, gesturing as she hops down into the form of a hound dog, deferentially a tad smaller than Cheyta.

“And I’m Liam,” he adds.

“Zayn,” Zayn says. Liam knew it already; he’s been hearing him sing in the hallways all day, and already asked someone. They shake hands, both offering a twitch of a smile. Their daemons touch noses carefully, and Lilia holds her head high as they part ways. Liam looks back to watch Zayn’s daemon flicking her tail regally and murmuring to him.

“That boy can sing,” Lilia says to him, not bothering to keep her voice down. He shushes her, and extends a hand so she can scurry up his arm in portable form again.

“Too many daemons in one place,” she sighs, curling up in his hood. “Imagine settling somewhere like this, all these other people on top of everything, I’d hate it.”

“Yeah, but she’s a _tiger_ ,” Liam says. He knows he looks like he’s talking to himself, but there’s a lot of that going around. A baby-faced kid with curly brown hair is sitting cross-legged on the floor by the wall, whispering into his cupped hands.

“Oh, ex _cuse_ me,” Lilia says. “I’ll be sure to pick something terribly fashionable when I get around to it.” She nips at the back of his neck and he squirms. This earns him a weird, knowing smile from curly across the room, which makes him flush.

“Just be something more impressive than that when we have to go on stage,” he says.

“You’re impressive enough for the both of us,” she says fondly, and he feels a rush of visceral affection like he’s never had for anyone – anything – but her, the little voice of support and reason and sometimes boldness in his ear. “But I’ll do my best.”

 

2.

The most surreal part of standing on stage in front of the judges again is all their daemons at their sides. Niall supposes he should guess what’s coming, because Réidh stiffens around his forearm the moment Nicole starts to talk, little claws clutching tight, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s a koala right now, choosing comfort amid the crushing stress of elimination over anything intimidating. Even Louis’ daemon is a fox winding around his ankles, though it’s spent most of boot camp strutting around as a peacock. Niall’s not sure if it’s a boy daemon – no one’s asked, though the peacock is the color boy peacocks are. He’s never met anyone with a daemon that’s their same gender.

And Zayn has his tiger, a giant, anchoring presence, and Liam’s is a fluffy, soulful dog almost the tiger’s size, much bigger than he's seen her be before backstage. Harry Styles’ daemon is nowhere to be seen, but he’s got a nervous hand in his pocket and Niall supposes she’s in there. Under any other circumstances he’d feel silly with Réidh in as fluffy and non-threatening a form as she is compared to these other, toothier animals, but right now he’s just glad she’s holding onto him.

He’s almost zoned out on her presence with the stress, and he’s tuning back in as Nicole is saying “too talented to let go,” and then Simon, and – it’s a blur, sudden, loud, the girls across the stage shrieking and the chitter-bark-hiss of raw daemon emotion and Réidh jumping down from his arm into the form of a puppy, nipping at his heels, laughing for joy. Harry’s dropped almost to the floor, head in his hands. A little mouse daemon tumbles from his pocket suddenly, weaving frantically between Réidh’s feet, squeaking. Niall falls on Harry's back and Réidh lets her climb up on hers and they dash around. 

Niall’s hugging the boys for the first time when he spies the other four daemons from beneath Liam’s arm. They’re all in some relatively cuddly form, sprawled about on top of Zayn’s tiger on the floor a few feet away from the group of them. He's never seen his daemon take so quickly to any others, but he can feel it, all that emotion, like Réidh feels it. Louis’ hand is clutching at the back of his shirt and he drops his head into their huddle, overwhelmed.

Simon is talking again, and Niall tries to focus, sees their daemons righting themselves out of the corner of his eye and tries very hard to tamp down his grin and keep the tears from eking out of the corners of his eyes. Réidh scurries back up to him as a koala and buries her face in his shin.

Their daemons are all muttering excitedly to them when they’re off stage. Zayn’s tiger’s voice gives him chills, she sounds so mature, but even she has a little quiver. Zayn himself is pale as a ghost. Harry and Louis are both flushed, grinning. For one shocking second Niall thinks Harry’s daemon is riding on Louis’ shoulder, but then he realizes Louis’ daemon has become a mouse to match Harry’s. Part of him wishes Réidh would do the same, but she’s probably doing him a favor not acting on that idea.

They’re standing in a circle, and the chatter dies down. “So,” Liam says, round-eyed. “Band.” He sounds like he’s trying out the word in his mouth.

“Let’s all dress like Louis ‘cause I like his shoes,” Niall blurts. Harry and Zayn snort with laughter, and Louis glances down at his shoes before giving Niall the thumbs up. Niall can’t quite tell if Réidh, now a bear cub, is rolling her eyes, but he gets the idea.

“A few big daemons in this group,” Louis says. “That’s not going to be practical.”

“Cheyta’s the only one who’s settled,” Zayn says. “Right?”

They all nod. Réidh changes into a hummingbird, just because she can, and does a few loops zooming around Niall’s head while Louis laughs his encouragement.

“Show-off,” Niall mutters once she’s on his shoulder.

“You’re welcome.” He can hear the smirk in her voice and shrugs her off, grinning. She lands as the bear cub again and steps on his foot.

“Liam,” interjects Liam’s dog. It’s the kind of sharp, urgent tone from a daemon that instantly makes everything else cease to matter, and they all look around.

“I’m – I can’t,” she says in her rough, sleepy voice. Liam stares down at her, and she tries again. “Li, I've... I'm stuck.”

There’s stunned silence for a second, and then Louis lets out a low whistle.

“Well done, Liam,” he says, clapping him on the back.

“Lilia?” Liam says. His voice is trembling. Lilia nods her big head and Liam lets his breath out in a harsh rush. He looks like his knees might give, and Niall grabs his arm. Then Harry’s moving in tentatively, then Louis and finally Zayn, and it’s their hug on stage all over again, except Liam is the only one fighting back tears. Niall sees the other daemons cuddling up to Lilia. She looks about as shocked as it seems like a giant, fluffy dog can. Niall's a little surprised that she and Liam don't just want each other, but this seems as comforting as anything could be, no strain, nothing tense like things can get when people are between a daemon and their human. 

He tightens his arm around Liam’s shoulders, pushing his head down toward the close space between their chests so he can see the daemons better. He watches Réidh nose up into Lilia’s broad chest with her little bear nose, and holds onto Liam a while longer.

 

3.

Louis isn’t sure why they’ve elected to drag the mattresses into the living room of the bungalow, considering that two of their daemons are the most amazing pillow animals ever and the other three can still be anything they want. But there’s something nice about getting to share.

Since Liam’s Lilia settled (they found out later she’s a Leonberger dog), Louis has wanted nothing more than to bury his face in her fur and possibly fall asleep there, but he knows it’s impossibly bad form. He’d even settle for getting to hold Cheyta’s huge square head in his lap for a bit. Maybe someday. Until then, he’s allowed to cuddle up to the big daemons’ respective humans at least, and that’s rather easier on a pile of mattresses than it would be on a pile of off-limits daemons.

"I've got one." Zayn tips his beer toward the other four. "Favorite artist to sing." 

"Wow, daring," Louis says, then giggles and flinches away as Zayn goes to smack him. Cheyta raises her head from the floor to appraise the situation before going back to dozing. Louis has never seen a daemon sleep when its human is awake, but it would be Zayn if it was anyone. Maybe Harry. He can definitely imagine Rose being asleep for most of the time she spends in Harry's pocket. 

"The Script," Liam says. 

"Yes!" Niall, across the room. He flings himself over the mattresses, army crawling, until he can give Liam a high five. 

"I like the Beatles." Harry's frowning pensively, like it's a revelation. Niall pats him on the head. 

"N'Sync for me," Zayn says, then shrugs with a smirk when the others laugh. "What? We're _in_ a boy band now." 

"Speak for yourself." Louis flops onto his back and thrusts double punk rock horns in the air. He sees Niall imitate him, and then notices that his own Argos, in his otter form, was already tussling around with Réidh beside the couch. They're all a little tipsy -- well, except Liam -- and their daemons are proportionally loosened up. 

It's already easy to be with the other four, kind of amazingly easy, but the daemons help, Niall’s and Harry’s especially. Réidh is the bear cub from boot camp again and Rose is one to match. The two of them scamper around the edges of the room, though never too far away. 

Lilia is warming to the others a little faster than Liam is, like she’s trying to help him take the leap. Argos is now clambering all over her while she lies complacently in a big pile of fur next to Liam. He catches Liam watching it too and grins at him, then chucks a pillow for good measure. It startles a laugh out of Liam, and then everyone else is laughing too. 

"Argos," Louis says softly, holding out a hand. The otter twines across the floor like he's in the water, all sinew and flex, and scampers up Louis' arm to curl around the back of his neck. 

"Is he a boy?" Niall asks, a determined blush spreading up his cheeks as Louis and Argos both turn to him. 

Argos glances at Louis, twitching his nose. 

"Yeah," Louis says. It's casual, like he always has to be, but his heart is jumping a little.

"Cool," Zayn says. 

"Cool," Niall echoes. Harry's nodding.

"I've never met anyone before." Liam's voice is low, a little breathless. "Who." He doesn't seem to know what to say. 

"Most people haven't," Louis says. "I'm the only one in my whole town." 

"Cool," Niall breathes again. 

"I'd like to be an otter," Réidh chimes in thoughtfully. It breaks a tension in the air that Louis hadn't realized was building, and he's grateful. "Do you have to spend a lot of time by the water?"

"Better than being a fish," Argos says. He winks at her, but it's Niall who blushes. 

"Stop it," Louis mutters down to his shoulder when the others aren't looking anymore.

"No," Argos says, "shan't." He nips him affectionately on the earlobe. 

"Prick," Louis grumbles, scooping Argos off his shoulder and setting him on the ground. 

"Learned from the best," Argos says, switching into fox form and curling up into the space within Louis' crooked knees. Louis scratches between his ears absently. 

It's a few minutes later when Réidh says, "Niall," very calmly in the midst of the conversation. He frowns over at her, then gets up and follows her out of the room on her trundling little black bear legs. Everyone glances at each other but no one says anything. Niall's gone for a bit and they're on the verge of playing truth or dare out of keyed up, tipsy boredom when he comes back in with her on his heels, looking a little pale. 

"She's settled," he says, looking up at them, then back down at Réidh, who holds his eyes for a long moment. It's enough so that Louis feels like he and the other three are intruding staring at them, Harry with his mouth slightly open, but then it passes. Réidh nudges Niall's leg with her wet bear nose and he follows her back into the room and drops down on the mattress, looking dazed. 

"Say something?" Niall says after a moment, staring around at them all. 

They all burst into congratulations and apologies and half-coherent exclamations at once, touching his knee, squeezing his shoulder. Rose flits up as a moth and alights on Réidh's head and just sits there, flapping her wings slowly. 

"Man," Louis says when the clamor dies down, "that makes three of you, though, doesn't it?"

"What?"

"Who've settled since we started this." 

"Mine was before the group," Zayn points out. 

"Yeah, but."

"Are you going to stay like that?" Lilia asks. Réidh cocks her head, and Lilia wags her tail once and elaborates, "Little." Liam smiles. 

"Dunno," Réidh says. "I suppose maybe not."

"Cool," Niall says quietly. A grin is spreading across his face, and then he's grabbing her around the middle and rolling onto his back, holding her aloft, both of them laughing.

Louis notices Rose on Niall's knee first.

"Harry," he says, leaning over. "Look." 

Harry glances over. "Oh, yeah. She does that." 

"She does?!" Never in his life has Louis seen someone's daemon touching someone else. Even his parents' never did, or Argos and his sisters' daemons. 

Harry frowns. "No," he says in his slow, thoughtful voice. Louis thinks Harry would be suited to a sloth daemon, but that's probably an impractical thing to wish on someone. "Rose," Harry says. He gives her a quizzical look when she flicks her antennae at him. 

"It's okay," she says. Her voice is tiny and somehow carrying. Everyone stops talking and looks around. 

"It's okay, right, Haz?" she asks again. Louis repeats the nickname in his mind. _Hazza_. Harry holds his finger out and she flutters onto it. 

He looks over at Zayn. 

"Can I?" he asks. 

Zayn doesn't look shocked, doesn't say anything, just looks down at Cheyta. She raises her head, a low rumble in her throat. It's not a growl, not exactly. Harry seems to take it as an invitation. Louis can hear Liam and Niall's twin intakes of breath as Harry reaches out and lays a hand flat atop her head. 

The shift in Zayn's carriage is visible, like he'd be clutching at his chest if he had less restraint. His whole face lights up pink, from his mouth across his cheeks and down into the collar of his t-shirt. 

"I can feel it," he breathes out. Then he laughs at himself. "God," he says. "But I can." Harry is still rubbing a thumb at the base of one of Cheyta's huge ears. He looks up at Zayn and smiles. Rose is on Zayn's shoulder now. She's sneaky, as small as she is in this form. She's crept up on them all. Typical Harry Styles. 

"Fuck," Louis whines as he looks at Harry and the tiger, unable to help himself. "I've wanted to pet her since the moment we met you, can I?" They all burst out laughing, and from there they all have to try it. It's like nothing Louis has experienced, the feeling of touching someone else's daemon, and even more so becoming comfortable with one. It's like all at once he knows everything about these boys, trusts them without a second thought, even though they've barely known each other for a week. It gets at something physically inside him -- a grip around his heart that burrows in and stays, a carrying warmth. 

Liam's the last to give in to it. Even Lilia says it's okay, but he's wary, keeps waving off everyone else's daemons when they reach out to him with paws and claws and the tips of feathers. 

"Li," Louis says finally. "Hey." He stretches out his hand and touches Liam on the knee, just lightly, with fingertips. "See?" Liam nods, eyebrows set. His eyes are flicking between Louis and Lilia. Everyone else is watching with mismatched daemons on their shoulders and against their legs. Argos is with Niall, letting Louis take this one on his own. 

"It's like that," Louis says. Liam is trembling, just a tiny bit, and it hits Louis then how insane this is -- that on top of everything, the show, the band, all the possibilities -- that they should have this too. Special in a different way. For all he's telling himself this experience is something he never dreamed in a million years he'd get a chance at, the way they're taking to each other, falling into each other -- daemons and all -- is on another plane entirely. 

Argos sidles up then, a little beagle dog, non-threatening and restrained. He looks at Liam, and when Liam nods, nudges his head beneath Liam's outstretched hand. 

Louis huffs out a little noise, half a laugh, and fists his hand in Lilia's fur just to anchor himself. It's every bit as amazing as it looks. 

"Can I just," he says, strained, "I'm sorry -- I just --" and he flops face-first into her side. Liam's laugh startles out of him. 

"This is wild, isn't it?" he says, shaking his head and scratching Argos behind the ears. Everybody murmurs their assent. Louis makes a happy, muffled noise into Lilia's side. 

They all sleep on top of each other that night, daemons and mattresses indistinguishable in the dark. Rose and Argos are both big and fluffy, too -- Argos a white tiger to show up Cheyta, and Rose some kind of half-imaginary pillow creature that slightly resembles a polar bear.

"Réidh's never done that." Niall's voice is hushed. "Something made up."

"I've just never wanted to!" she says, indignation creeping into her Irish lilt. 

"Sorry," Niall murmurs. "Just -- and now you'll be like this forever." 

"It sounds so _bad_ when you say it like that." 

"No, it's not!" he says. She grumbles. "Réidh, it's not," he says again. "It's not." 

"No," Harry agrees. "I... I think it's great," he tells her, at length, and Louis feels him shift to stroke beneath her chin. "I'm glad we got to be here for it. And. Yeah." 

Louis knows what he isn't saying, what they're all thinking, that they're grateful for this even if they don't know the words to describe it. Réidh seems satisfied. She curls closer in the midst of them all, tight to Niall's side, and Louis relaxes against the rise and fall of the other daemons' fluffy sides and listens to everyone breathe. 

 

4\. 

They make an unspoken decision to stop being so open with touching one another's daemons at Simon's house, but it doesn't last long. Harry reasons that the small size of the stairways where they film the video diaries are as good a place to lay blame at any, but the truth is he misses it. He'd never cared as much about the etiquette behind it, keeping your hands and your daemon's hands to yourself, but he hadn't gone and breached that etiquette, either, just to save himself from getting punched in the face or something. With these boys, though, it had felt obvious. Seeing two of their daemons settling, meeting another days after his did -- what more was there, really, then to act like they all belonged to each other from the start? 

It's Rose who plants most of these thoughts in his mind. She can be very philosophical, especially depending on her form. "I think she's smarter than you," Zayn tells him one day, chuckling.

"That's alright, dear," Rose says to Harry, wiggling her little mouse nose cheekily. 

"Quiet, mum." 

"I _know_ I'm smarter than Niall," Réidh says. Liam laughs. 

Lilia picks her head up from where it's lolling off the bed. "Where's Louis?" she asks. "Haven't we got something... I don't know, sometime? Boy banding to do?"

"Doesn't seem fair to call it that, you know," Cheyta says. Zayn rolls his eyes. Harry hears a "girl power" that comes from either Réidh or Niall, he's not sure. He stands up. 

"You all settle your gender issues," he says. "I'll go find Tommo."

"Argos won't be any help." Réidh rolls over on her back, stubby legs wheeling. Harry sticks a hand out for Rose and she skitters up his sleeve into the hood of his sweatshirt. 

He finds Louis and Argos, as an otter, in the stairwell, murmuring to one another. 

"Lou?" he asks, descending and squeezing in beside him. 

Louis looks around at him. His eyes are a little wet, and the question is on the tip of Harry's tongue when Rose says, "Argos, you changed." 

The otter doesn't say anything. 

"He's been like this for a few days, but he doesn't always like to change much, we just thought --" 

"He settled," Harry says quietly. 

Louis nods, then sniffs, wiping his eyes roughly. 

"You aren't happy?" Rose asks. 

"No, I -- I'm really fucking happy," Louis says, laughing. The sound breaks in the middle. 

"It's my favorite," Argos says. "The peacock's just for show. It's -- this is really us, I think."

"Better be," Louis murmurs. Argos chitters out a laugh and curls closer into the bracket of Louis' hunched body. 

Harry curls a finger around his little head, his whiskers, his bright eyes. Louis looks up at him. 

"It's just a lot, you know?" he says, chewing on his lower lip. "All this. And you four. And now... yeah."

"Yeah," Harry says. "Guess it must be, like, the stress, you think? All of you settling since we've been on the show." 

"Something like that," Louis says. 

They stay still for a while, then Louis shrugs into him, rueful. Argos and Rose are now sitting together at their feet in quiet conference, the way daemons get sometimes. 

"I'm being stupid," Louis says. "I am happy. I actually am. I don't know."

"I get it," Harry says. "I wonder if she'll... when she'll do it." He nudges Rose with his socked toe. 

Louis smiles, a tug in the corner of his mouth that wipes the stress clean off his face and makes Harry warm, like when any of the rest of them are touching Rose. 

"Maybe when we win." Louis' eyes are sparkling. Harry hears Rose squeak her approval from somewhere just out of view, and he laughs. "Hey," Louis adds, "but we'll be here. If you need us." 

They put their heads together for a moment, and never in his life has Harry felt so lucky. 

 

5\. 

They don't win, so maybe it's just Rose having the last word that she takes until halfway through their American tour to change. It's more than a year later, when there are millions of fans and their daemons who know everything about the band and _their_ daemons, when they've gone platinum, when Harry's topped that lucky feeling a thousand times over. 

But never does he top it quite so much as when Rose whispers in his ear from her place as a mouse on his shoulder in the middle of the stage in Houston, and the first person Harry makes eye contact with isn't a person, but Réidh, giving him a knowing bear-grin from the arm of the couch. He tops it when he gets to announce, giddy and shaking, to thousands of screaming fans and daemons and flashing lights that Rose has settled. And then there are four other bodies knocking him down on stage, four other daemons piling on, too. 

It's the perfect place for something he'd always thought deep down would be so scary. Harry thinks from the middle of their puppy pile on stage that there's hardly anything that seems scary anymore, so long as he's got them.

**Author's Note:**

> niall, zayn and louis' daemons' names have some meaning if anyone is interested/assuming the internet didn't lie to me (it probably did):
> 
> 1\. réidh is some kind of irish word for easy  
> 2\. cheyta means tiger in urdu  
> 3\. argos is the name of odysseus' dog and a common greek name for a dog or any pet
> 
> thnx 4 readin :)))


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